The Sheepdogs perform July 19 at The Machine Shop in Flint.Courtesy Photo

FLINT, MI -- The Sheepdogs may have won Rolling Stone's 2011 "Choose the Cover" contest, but be assured that there's nothing manufactured about them.

"It gave us a lot of publicity -- most back in Canada," said lead singer Ewan Currie, whose band hails from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

"It gave us some publicity in the States, but it was just a competition. It's not like we could put our feet up and say 'mission complete.' We're a hard-working, unknown band in America."

To change that perception, The Sheepdogs are touring relentlessly in the States and abroad. The jaunt includes a show at The Machine Shop in Flint on Friday, July 19.

"We need to win people over and show people that we're a rock 'n' roll band and not just some guys that won a competition," said Currie, who was calling from Toronto, Ont.

The Sheepdogs released several independent recordings before entering the Rolling Stone contest, for which they beat out 15 other bands. They appeared on the Aug. 18, 2011, magazine cover and became the first unsigned act to do so. To push their cause, The Sheepdogs appeared on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and hit the stages of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tenn., and The Osheaga Festival in Montreal, Quebec.

The win yielded more than a magazine cover. The Sheepdogs inked a deal with Atlantic Records and recruited The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney to produce their self-titled debut.

"We had always made our albums by ourselves," Currie said. "This was the first time we worked with somebody else. We weren't sure who we were going to work with, but it worked out that we got to work with somebody that we actually wanted to."

Currie explained the collaboration was challenging, but definitely worth the while.

"When it's just yourselves making it, you just go, 'Let's do that,'" he said. "When there's somebody else involved, you have to incorporate their suggestions and get their different opinions. It's cool. We're just basically a bunch of guys that are building up songs in a room. 'Is this good? Does this suck?' He's a force, for sure. So he definitely had some good input."

The Sheepdogs and Carney tracked everything in two and a half weeks, due to Carney's touring schedule with the Grammy Award-winning The Black Keys.

"We banged it out," he said. "That's been the story of our last two and a half, three years. Everything is go, go, go. We're very much on the run all the time. But in music, it's a good thing. If we had nothing but time on our hands, then we wouldn't be doing very well. You have to be in demand, you know?"

If Currie had his way, he'd be in the studio more frequently -- especially eating tacos with Carney in the Nashville studio where "The Sheepdogs" was recorded.

"I love recording," Currie explained. "It's probably my favorite thing to do. I love performing and I love recording, but the ratio's a bit skewed. We perform two years for every month we record. I wish we could do a little more than the other thing."

However, Currie isn't downplaying The Sheepdogs' live show, which he described as "very orchestrated but very high energy." There is room for improvisation and nice segues, he explained.

"I think a lot of people come see us and say, 'These guys are for real,'" Currie said. "We're not The Monkees. We're a real band that's logged a lot of hours on stage. We work really hard and we have a lot of fun. We're just entertainers."